It was that time of year again to have to clean up the shop. It's a good thing we have to do this else we'd up to our ears in junk. Here's Cessna wondering what happened to all her stuff.

Clean shop before

Here's the same place the next say filled with wild and crazy people. It's just shocking how many people will ditch their old time family traditions and families to come out here and get abused by no telling who. It may have something to do with having to prepare only one dish, having no set up or house cleaning and no clean up at the end; you just pick up your drink, drop you plate in the trash and wander off to look at the water or listen to Stan playing rowdy songs in the hut. There wasn't a single complaint about the dust and spider webs. We estimate that there were between 50 and 60 people here this year. Being the host I had the job of hugging all the girls hello and good bye, someone has to do it don't they?

Clean shop after

Boat rides were an ongoing event.

It was not all peaches and cream, had to watch out for the dirty wet dogs.

The Tiki Hut was packed after dark.

The Maritime Museum ask us to bring some boats out to display last week here’s Jim cleaning up his Carpenter.

I took a picture of Mike Burwell in his Marsh Hen a while back and here's Curt Bowman doing a painting of it. Michael sold this boat shortly after this picture was taken and is working on replacing it with some little cabin boat. It's hard going from this great boat to some dinky little slow ass POS.

Mike Wick always sails right on the verge of getting into trouble. Here he is in the boat he cold molded from the hull of a Cortez melonseed. Check the rudder angle, looks like he's about to round up and play bumper car with the other boat.

Here he is a few years ago, Howard and I were watching from the light house bar in St Michaels and just knew he was going to jibe in this gust, capsize and go swimming. We were disappointed that he managed to keep her upright, dam.

Here's some shots inside the museum. They've done a lot of work remodeling the place, visit the place if you're ever in Bradenton. I can think of some antique tool collectors who'd love to get their hands on this sign.

They even have a kids room.

These things wash up on the beach once in a while and scare the women, children and Steve. It's a giant Placostamus, the little tropical fish you put in your fish tank to clean the glass. As you can see, in the wild they get big and ugly. We try to get of dead fish off of the beach before the dogs find them so they usually end up on Chelsea's bow to be dropped off on the way home for the crabs to eat.

My new sail, I traced the duck and letter on to the stick on stuff.

This in my tabernacle I made so raising and lowering the mast would be easy and it is. All I have to do is unlace the lines holding the gaff and boom jaws, pull the bolts, attach the lever to that eye bolt and it all comes down with one hand. All of the lines are still attached so it only takes a minute to put it back up and be sailing. I made it from a three inch pvc pipe that I cut and shaped and glassed. PVC becomes very soft and flexible when you heat it so you can get just the shape you need. It has to be heavily reinforced with either fiberglass or carbon fiber; I used both. The mast has to be reinforced here at the pivot point also.

Not what you're thinking, this is a long fish box that we used as our beer cooler.

Up front is the best place to sit for a tour on Sandy's little tug.

Cute girl in a kayak, this is Summer, one of the honey's we try to discourage from coming around and messing with us. Like all women, they ignore us. We've noticed that the women who like to come here are very self reliant and sure of themselves. Give this one any crap and she'll come back with something like " how'd you like that other hip broken old man".

The little boat that Howard built for Red needed a trailer to move around the yard so Steve found an old rusted out garden trailer in the woods and used parts of it for this.

Not bad work for a useless slug.

We've had some really low tides and some really high tides this month. Here's a really high tide, the end of the dock is under water. Notice that the plants growing out of the pipes are doing pretty good.